Time Marches

Blood of Vol

The Blood of Vol is a religion that worships no god or higher power. Instead, its Seekers focus on the idea of divinity within its worshipers, and are obsessed with the ideas of heredity and, most importantly, blood. To adherents of the faith, blood represents the greatest source of power and divinity within oneself. They believe only in what can be observed, in what is physical and present. Otherworldly powers are of no interest to the Blood of Vol; to the Seekers, strong enough faith in oneself paves the way to immortality.

History

The Blood of Vol is a distant descendant of Aerenal elven religion, mutated extensively by House Vol, a now-defunct dragonmarked house that manifested the “Mark of Death” — the nature of which has seemingly entirely been eradicated from history. The house itself and all of its members were destroyed during the War of the Mark, but its elven allies spread House Vol’s unusual faith across Khorvaire thereafter.

While not necessarily evil in practice, the religion is mired in controversy due in no small part to propaganda efforts initiated by the Church of the Silver Flame and post-Last War Karrnath. The former reviles the Blood of Vol out of principle, for their faith is antithetical, but the latter was once closely aligned with the church, to the point where it was Karrnath’s state religion for a time. Though it is true that the teachings of the Blood of Vol are dark and grim, they are assuredly not inherently evil, and neither are its followers.

Practices

Seekers of the Blood of Vol are in constant state of self-improvement, vying for immortality. They revere the undead (though do not worship them, as some believe) as an admirable ideal, representative of great sacrifice, and the undead are typically seen as champions of the faith who gave up true immortality for the betterment of other Seekers. For this reason, the ideology of the Blood of Vol is almost inextricable from necromancy.

The largest worship site and the unofficial headquarters of the Blood of Vol is the Crimson Monastery in Atur, a city of Karrnath. Here, the highest concentration of followers are found to this day, even though it is no longer Karrnath’s state religion.